


What Lurks Behind This Mask

by lothering



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Anxiety Attacks, Depression, Gen, Project Freelancer, Redemption and Hope, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lothering/pseuds/lothering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would survive this, if nothing else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Lurks Behind This Mask

Numb. Joyless. Hollow to the very core. These were a few words to describe what lay beyond a jovial, scarred visage. It started when he was young, tendrils of anxiety arriving unexplained, consuming him. Leaving him locked up in his room for hours until he was called down by his parents for lunch or dinner. With some distraction - social interaction, mostly - he was able to forget the haunting feeling of being choked by invisible hands, an unwelcome panic bubbling in his stomach, hands too unsteady to hold a pencil let alone the lock picks he had been practicing with in secret. He was ten. He would get over it, his father assured him when he came across the boy in the midst of an episode.

It began to spiral downward in junior high. Make no mistake, he had plenty of after-school sports and friends to keep him busy. People flocked to him like moths to a bright light. His personality, overall, was charming and warm, though not lacking in a healthy heap of cheeky mischief and an inability to read a social atmosphere properly. There had been fights, sometimes involving fists, but his apologies were always genuine and he was never at odds with another classmate for long.

And yet he felt raw, sometimes suffocated by the presence of his vast circle of companions. Days could pass where he would feign sickness, simply to avoid the squeeze of the school halls, to curl up underneath his blankets with knees tucked to his chest, wheezing as tears threatened but did not fall. Boys didn't cry, his father had hushed him at the end of his mother's funeral. Boys were strong, became men through that strength, and kept moving forwards at all times.

But oh, how he wished he could cry. Perhaps that would release the anguish, the darkness he felt creeping in at the joints of his jaw, aching, dancing up to fade his vision until he squeezed his eye shut, shook his head and thereby shook the feeling away. He would be alright. He was always alright. Soon enough he would be back at school, back to the books, back to the soccer field and baseball diamond, catching up on all that he had missed. Submersing himself in distraction until he ran himself ragged and consciousness blinked out as soon as his head hit the pillow at night. He nearly fell behind a grade for the days that he missed, but he kept moving forwards.

Always moving, always talking, always laughing. Hiding the shame, hiding the sorrow, hiding the choking panic and the collapsing sensation within him. Nobody saw. Nobody knew. Nobody cared.

Miraculously, he passed the psychological assessment when he joined the military. Then again, the bars weren't set too high for anyone joining the Hell-jumpers. They were all a little nuts, all missing a screw here or there, reckless and yet constant all at once. They knew they faced death with every jump, and they embraced it. He never stopped talking with them, never stopped laughing - laughing at crude jarhead humour, laughing in the face of death each time he rocketed down towards the surface of a planet under siege. At no other time in his life up to that point did he feel as calm, as serene, as he did when flirting with death. It made him feel more alive than he had been in years.

And then they died. All of his squad mates taken out by a patrol of Covenant Hunters, and himself stuck in his goddamn drop pod, somehow looked over by the beasts and left to wait three days surrounded by the bodies of his friends - his _family_ \- before rescue by a passing UNSC cruiser. The reports called him lucky. He considered himself cursed.

He learned to shut out the numbness, shunt away the dark thoughts in a small corner of his mind. Never gone, always lingering, always waiting for the moment he would step into a quiet and empty room. It attacked him in his solitude, strangling him and leaving him ass-flat on the ground or in a vacant seat until he heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Company was his salvation. Constant motion, forever chatting and laughing, poking and prodding almost lovingly at others became his addiction. He could run from the aching and the vast emptiness like this. He could keep this up forever. He could...

He could...

He could become someone new, as it turned out. As it turned out, his file had been passed between hands until it was received by the Director of one Project Freelancer. He was given a new suit, Spartan Mark V with mods, given a new mission, given a new name.

Agent York was created and given purpose.

Theirs was an elite crew. A specialized task force to combat insurgent rebels and other foes. York didn't pay much attention to the little history lesson he was given in his briefing. His eyes had danced between the faces of those who had been selected alongside him at the beginning of the project: Agents North and South Dakota, Agent Wyoming, Agent Georgia, and Agent Carolina. The numbers would grow and shrink on a cycle, but York's purpose and resolution did not dwindle.

He hid behind a mask still, but he was learning to cope. To open up a bit, to certain people, and...things were alright. The laughter and jokes felt more real with each passing day.

He could survive this, if nothing else.


End file.
